updated 10:15 am EST, Tue January 25, 2011

NVIDIA unveils GeForce GTX 560 Ti at 249

NVIDIA today brought its second-generation Fermi hardware into the true mid-range while simultaneously resurrecting the Ti badge not used since the GeForce 3 and 4 days. The GeForce GTX 560 Ti directly replaces the GTX 460 and is about a third faster, owing both to 384 visual effects cores (up from 332) as well as a much higher 822MHz core and 1.64GHz shader clocks (up from 675MHz and 1.35GHz). Eight hardware tessellation engines also give it a steeper performance increase for DirectX 11 and OpenGL games that support the feature.

The chipset is targeted most consciously against the AMD Radeon HD 6870 and is often faster, in some cases getting close enough to challenge the speeds of the 6950.

Earlier features remain intact, including 3D display on one or more displays, DirectCompute and OpenCL, and full hardware decoding for Blu-ray.

The card should officially hit $249 and should be just slightly more expensive in official pricing than the $239 Radeon HD 6870. The launch is a full one and should see cards already available today that include ASUS, EVGA, MSI and others. Pricing will vary and should include some factory-overclocked models. Computer builders are also using the GTX 560 Ti immediately and in the near future.

Mac?

MacNN, why do you constantly put these cards that are not mac-compatible on your site? Don't you even read these press releases? Might as well report on vacuum cleaners, as its not much help to Mac users.